Holt qualifies for Scando Cup team

It’s been smooth skating for Stella

Holt thus far this winter. The Whitefish High School senior and

standout Nordic skier has avoided the injuries and sicknesses that

have plagued her the past two winters, and finally she’s getting

the results she’s dreamed of.

Holt recently earned a spot on the

elite U.S. J1 Scandinavian Cup team. The Glacier Nordic team racer

is one of one six girls in the U.S. to make the squad. She will

travel to Sweden at the end of this month to test her stamina and

technique against the best in the world.

Holt’s been gunning to make the “Scando

Cup” since she won a Junior National title in March 2009 as a

sophomore, but she’s battled one injury after another since then.

She had a sledding accident, was in a car wreck and took a serious

fall while climbing Mt. Gould in Glacier National Park. The

climbing fall broke her lower tibia and fibula and put her in a

cast for weeks.

She worked her way back into shape that

fall and winter only to catch a case of mononucleosis to start

2010. Mono is a viral infection that can persist for months with

symptoms of fatigue and extreme tiredness. The sickness lingered

for most of January and she never felt 100 percent, Holt said,

despite earning a trip to Junior Nationals in Maine.

This winter, Holt’s mind has been set

on getting back into top form. With the help of Glacier Nordic

coach Robin Brooks, she says she’s finally reached that level.

“I felt that if I could get one whole

year of training under my belt, that I’d be back,” Holt said. “I’ve

pretty much hit that. I finally got to go to Senior Nationals, I

was able to race well there and have had no sicknesses or injuries.

It’s really nice to have everything come together for the first

time in three seasons.”

Now that Holt’s made the Scando team,

she’s ready to see where she stands among the best in her sport.

The races in Sweden will pit her against the top J1 skiers in

Europe, where Nordic is far more popular than in the U.S.

“I don’t know what to expect there,

other than a lot more competition than I’ve ever seen,” she

said.

Holt’s best discipline is the sprint,

which she says her powerful body type is built for. In a sprint,

racers go as hard as they can for 3-4 minutes on a 1.2-kilometer

loop. Her performance in the sprint race at Senior Nationals in

Maine last week helped her make the Scando team.

The senior hasn’t made any decisions

about what she will do after graduation, but she’s toying with the

idea of taking a year off to explore her potential as an Olympic

hopeful. Before going to Senior Nationals, Holt was staying with

the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation, in Idaho. She said her

time with the team changed her outlook on a skiing future.

“In a perfect world, I’d take a year

off,” she said. “I’d go ski in Sun Valley for a season. I hadn’t

thought about that until I went and lived in Sun Valley for a week

and heard about it every single day. I think that would be a really

valuable time period for me.”

Holt says the Scando team is the ground

floor of the U.S. Ski Team and that she has a long way to go before

she reaches the top level. Still, she wants to make Nordic skiing a

priority in her life and find out how good she is — and can be.

“It takes so much dedication to get to

the Olympic level you can’t do anything else,” she said. “I need to

explore my potential a little more. That’s why I think taking a

year off could be really valuable. I’m pulled in so many directions

here, it’d be fun to focus in on one thing.”

Holt needs to raise about $4,000 to

help fund her trip to the Scandinavian Cup. She has set up an

account for donations at Glacier Bank under the name “Send Stella

to Scando.” Donors can call her at 212-3444 to learn more about the

trip.